The banks won’t fail … as long as they get more bailouts

I woke up this morning feeling pretty good. But if you wanted to give me a couple hundred dollars, I’d sure be doing a lot better.

The government has been giving “stress tests” to 19 of the country’s biggest banks, seeing how they’d perform if we continue down this recession path. Surprisingly, or not, the tests found that the banks are in decent shape, but they’ll still need more bailout money from Uncle Sam, the New York Times reports.

The tests have been going on for about two months, with another month to go. As is the case in life, there will be winners and there will be losers. But because all these tests are going on behind closed doors, the public doesn’t know who’s faring better yet.

The Federal Reserve is administering the tests, which ask several “what-if” questions in the event the economy deteriorates. Situations include unemployment rising to 10.3 percent by next year, home prices falling 22 percent this year, and the economy shrinking by 3.3 percent this year and staying flat in 2010, the article says.

Hopefully, we’ll know more next week when some of these big banks start reporting their first quarter results.